This collection of essays brings together the first study of TV drama in China. Examining the production, distribution, and consumption of TV drama, the team of contributors demonstrate why it ...
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This collection of essays brings together the first study of TV drama in China. Examining the production, distribution, and consumption of TV drama, the team of contributors demonstrate why it remains the pre-eminent media form in China. The examples are diverse, highlighting the complexity of producing narrative content in a rapidly changing political and social environment. Genres examined include the revisionist Qing drama, historical and contemporary domestic dramas, anti-corruption dramas, “pink” dramas, Red Classics, stories from the Diaspora, and sit-coms. In addition to genres, the collection explores industry dynamics: how TV dramas are marketed and consumed on DVD, and China's aspirations to export its television drama rights. The book provides an international and cross-cultural perspective with chapters on Taiwanese TV drama in China, the impact of South Korean drama, and trans-border production between the Mainland and Hong Kong.Less

TV Drama in China

Published in print: 2008-10-01

This collection of essays brings together the first study of TV drama in China. Examining the production, distribution, and consumption of TV drama, the team of contributors demonstrate why it remains the pre-eminent media form in China. The examples are diverse, highlighting the complexity of producing narrative content in a rapidly changing political and social environment. Genres examined include the revisionist Qing drama, historical and contemporary domestic dramas, anti-corruption dramas, “pink” dramas, Red Classics, stories from the Diaspora, and sit-coms. In addition to genres, the collection explores industry dynamics: how TV dramas are marketed and consumed on DVD, and China's aspirations to export its television drama rights. The book provides an international and cross-cultural perspective with chapters on Taiwanese TV drama in China, the impact of South Korean drama, and trans-border production between the Mainland and Hong Kong.

This book offers a bridge into the critical understanding of modern Chinese art through its encounter with the world beyond China's borders. It demonstrates Chinese art's interconnections with ...
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This book offers a bridge into the critical understanding of modern Chinese art through its encounter with the world beyond China's borders. It demonstrates Chinese art's interconnections with Western cultures while exploring its inherited cultural traditions and internal historical change. The first section deals with the cross-cultural trajectories of individual Chinese artists who travelled from China to the West and then returned. In the second section, the focus shifts from the movement of individual artists between cultures to the process by which specific genres of Western art have been interpreted by Chinese artists. The final section illuminates the encounter of cultures via visual representations of Macau and Hong Kong.Less

Chinese Art and Its Encounter with the World

David Clarke

Published in print: 2011-10-04

This book offers a bridge into the critical understanding of modern Chinese art through its encounter with the world beyond China's borders. It demonstrates Chinese art's interconnections with Western cultures while exploring its inherited cultural traditions and internal historical change. The first section deals with the cross-cultural trajectories of individual Chinese artists who travelled from China to the West and then returned. In the second section, the focus shifts from the movement of individual artists between cultures to the process by which specific genres of Western art have been interpreted by Chinese artists. The final section illuminates the encounter of cultures via visual representations of Macau and Hong Kong.

The fiction of Lu Xun (1881–1936) deals with China moving beyond the 1911 Revolution. He asks about the possibility of survival, and what that means, even considering the possibility that madness ...
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The fiction of Lu Xun (1881–1936) deals with China moving beyond the 1911 Revolution. He asks about the possibility of survival, and what that means, even considering the possibility that madness might be a strategy by which survival is made possible. Such an idea calls identity into question, and Lu Xun is read here as a writer for whom that is a wholly problematic concept. This book makes use of critical and cultural theory to consider these short stories in the context of not only Chinese fiction, but in terms of the art of the short story, and in relation to literary modernism. It attempts to put Lu Xun into as wide a perspective as possible for contemporary reading.Less

Madmen and Other Survivors : Reading Lu Xun's Fiction

Jeremy Tambling

Published in print: 2007-02-01

The fiction of Lu Xun (1881–1936) deals with China moving beyond the 1911 Revolution. He asks about the possibility of survival, and what that means, even considering the possibility that madness might be a strategy by which survival is made possible. Such an idea calls identity into question, and Lu Xun is read here as a writer for whom that is a wholly problematic concept. This book makes use of critical and cultural theory to consider these short stories in the context of not only Chinese fiction, but in terms of the art of the short story, and in relation to literary modernism. It attempts to put Lu Xun into as wide a perspective as possible for contemporary reading.

Historians and anthropologists have long been interested in South China where powerful lineages and gendered hierarchies are juxtaposed with unorthodox trading cultures, multi-ethnic colonial ...
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Historians and anthropologists have long been interested in South China where powerful lineages and gendered hierarchies are juxtaposed with unorthodox trading cultures, multi-ethnic colonial encounters, and market-driven consumption. The divergent paths taken by women in Hong Kong and Guangdong during thirty years of Maoist closure, and the post-reform cross-border fluidities have also gained analytical attention. This book provides further theoretical application of a “regional construct” that appreciates process, transcends definitive powers of administrative borders, and brings out nuanced gender notions. The book uses fine-grained historical and ethnographic materials to map out three crucial historical junctures in the evolution of South China, from late imperial to contemporary periods that have significantly shaped the construction of gendered space. Stressing process and human agency, this book uses women's experiences to challenge dichotomous analytical perspectives on lineage patriarchy, colonial institutions, power, and social activism. The book refocuses attention on cultural dynamics in the South China region of which Hong Kong is an integral part, and illuminates the analytical importance of long historical periods in which layers of social, political, and economic activities intersected to constitute the complicated positioning of women.Less

Helen F. Siu

Published in print: 2010-06-01

Historians and anthropologists have long been interested in South China where powerful lineages and gendered hierarchies are juxtaposed with unorthodox trading cultures, multi-ethnic colonial encounters, and market-driven consumption. The divergent paths taken by women in Hong Kong and Guangdong during thirty years of Maoist closure, and the post-reform cross-border fluidities have also gained analytical attention. This book provides further theoretical application of a “regional construct” that appreciates process, transcends definitive powers of administrative borders, and brings out nuanced gender notions. The book uses fine-grained historical and ethnographic materials to map out three crucial historical junctures in the evolution of South China, from late imperial to contemporary periods that have significantly shaped the construction of gendered space. Stressing process and human agency, this book uses women's experiences to challenge dichotomous analytical perspectives on lineage patriarchy, colonial institutions, power, and social activism. The book refocuses attention on cultural dynamics in the South China region of which Hong Kong is an integral part, and illuminates the analytical importance of long historical periods in which layers of social, political, and economic activities intersected to constitute the complicated positioning of women.

This is a serious study on the topic of male same-sex relations in China during the early twentieth century, illuminating male same-sex relations in many sites: language, translated sexological ...
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This is a serious study on the topic of male same-sex relations in China during the early twentieth century, illuminating male same-sex relations in many sites: language, translated sexological writings, literary works, tabloid newspapers, and opera. Documenting how nationalism and colonial modernity reconfigured Chinese discourses on sex between men in the early twentieth century, the book utilizes a wealth of material previously overlooked by scholars, such as the entertainment news and opinion pieces related to same-sex relations published in the tabloid press. It sheds new light on several puzzles, such as the process whereby sex between men became increasingly stigmatized in China between the 1910s and 1940s, and shows that the rich vocabulary and concepts that existed for male-male relations in pre-modern China continued to be used by journalists and writers throughout the Republican era, creating the conditions for receiving Western sexology.Less

Obsession : Male Same-Sex Relations in China, 1900-1950

Wenqing Kang

Published in print: 2009-03-01

This is a serious study on the topic of male same-sex relations in China during the early twentieth century, illuminating male same-sex relations in many sites: language, translated sexological writings, literary works, tabloid newspapers, and opera. Documenting how nationalism and colonial modernity reconfigured Chinese discourses on sex between men in the early twentieth century, the book utilizes a wealth of material previously overlooked by scholars, such as the entertainment news and opinion pieces related to same-sex relations published in the tabloid press. It sheds new light on several puzzles, such as the process whereby sex between men became increasingly stigmatized in China between the 1910s and 1940s, and shows that the rich vocabulary and concepts that existed for male-male relations in pre-modern China continued to be used by journalists and writers throughout the Republican era, creating the conditions for receiving Western sexology.

Any traditional theatre has to engage the changing world to avoid becoming a living fossil. How has Beijing Opera — a highly stylized theatre with breath-taking acrobatics and martial arts, fabulous ...
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Any traditional theatre has to engage the changing world to avoid becoming a living fossil. How has Beijing Opera — a highly stylized theatre with breath-taking acrobatics and martial arts, fabulous costumes and striking makeup — survived into the new millennium while coping with a century of great upheavals and competition from new entertainment forms? This book answers that question, looking at the evolution of singing and performance styles, make-up and costume, audience demands, as well as stage and street presentation modes amid tumultuous social and political changes. The author's study follows a number of major artists' careers in mainland China and Taiwan, drawing on primary print sources as well as personal interviews with performers and their cultural peers. One chapter focuses on the career of the author's own mother and how she adapted to changes in Communist ideology. In addition, the book explores how performers as social beings have responded to conflicts between tradition and modernity, and between convention and innovation. Through performers' negotiation and compromises, Beijing Opera has undergone constant re-examination of its inner artistic logic and adjusted to the demands of the external world.Less

The Soul of Beijing Opera : Theatrical Creativity and Continuity in the Changing World

Ruru Li

Published in print: 2010-05-01

Any traditional theatre has to engage the changing world to avoid becoming a living fossil. How has Beijing Opera — a highly stylized theatre with breath-taking acrobatics and martial arts, fabulous costumes and striking makeup — survived into the new millennium while coping with a century of great upheavals and competition from new entertainment forms? This book answers that question, looking at the evolution of singing and performance styles, make-up and costume, audience demands, as well as stage and street presentation modes amid tumultuous social and political changes. The author's study follows a number of major artists' careers in mainland China and Taiwan, drawing on primary print sources as well as personal interviews with performers and their cultural peers. One chapter focuses on the career of the author's own mother and how she adapted to changes in Communist ideology. In addition, the book explores how performers as social beings have responded to conflicts between tradition and modernity, and between convention and innovation. Through performers' negotiation and compromises, Beijing Opera has undergone constant re-examination of its inner artistic logic and adjusted to the demands of the external world.

Colonial civil servant, Confucian scholar, and collector of Chinese art, artefacts and coins, Sir James Stewart Lockhart (1858–1937) spent more than forty years in Hong Kong and Weihaiwei—the former ...
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Colonial civil servant, Confucian scholar, and collector of Chinese art, artefacts and coins, Sir James Stewart Lockhart (1858–1937) spent more than forty years in Hong Kong and Weihaiwei—the former British leased territory in northern China. His career reflects tension and upheaval in the emerging colony of Hong Kong and in a China rapidly giving way to civil war. In Hong Kong (1879–1902) he rose to the highest levels and brought a refreshingly different approach to colonial rule, and maintained peace and order during troubled times. He immersed himself in Chinese culture, made friends with local leaders, strengthened Chinese institutions, and fought against racism. When the colony was extended in 1898 he was given the important task of delineating the boundaries of the New Territories and organising its administration. This biography of Stewart Lockhart, presents a portrait of an imperial official who strove to preserve the Chinese way of life, and was treated by Chinese mandarins as one of their own. The book makes use of Sir James Stewart Lockhart's private papers and extensive archival research to provide this insight into the character, career, and friends of an imperial official of rare talent and achievement.Less

Thistle and Bamboo : The Life and Times of Sir James Stewart Lockhart

Shiona Airlie

Published in print: 2010-10-01

Colonial civil servant, Confucian scholar, and collector of Chinese art, artefacts and coins, Sir James Stewart Lockhart (1858–1937) spent more than forty years in Hong Kong and Weihaiwei—the former British leased territory in northern China. His career reflects tension and upheaval in the emerging colony of Hong Kong and in a China rapidly giving way to civil war. In Hong Kong (1879–1902) he rose to the highest levels and brought a refreshingly different approach to colonial rule, and maintained peace and order during troubled times. He immersed himself in Chinese culture, made friends with local leaders, strengthened Chinese institutions, and fought against racism. When the colony was extended in 1898 he was given the important task of delineating the boundaries of the New Territories and organising its administration. This biography of Stewart Lockhart, presents a portrait of an imperial official who strove to preserve the Chinese way of life, and was treated by Chinese mandarins as one of their own. The book makes use of Sir James Stewart Lockhart's private papers and extensive archival research to provide this insight into the character, career, and friends of an imperial official of rare talent and achievement.

The history of foreign journalists in China starts with the newspapers printed in the European Factories of Canton in the 1820s and ends with the Communist revolution in 1949. It also starts with a ...
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The history of foreign journalists in China starts with the newspapers printed in the European Factories of Canton in the 1820s and ends with the Communist revolution in 1949. It also starts with a duel between two editors over China's future and ends with a fistfight in Shanghai over the revolution. The men and women of the foreign press experienced China's history and development; its convulsions and upheavals; its revolutions and wars. They had front row seats at every major twist and turn in China's fortunes. The old China press corps were the witnesses and the primary interpreters to millions globally of the history of modern China and they were themselves a cast of fascinating characters. Like journalists everywhere they took sides, they brought their own assumptions and prejudices to China along with their hopes, dreams and fears. They weren't infallible; they got the story completely wrong as often as they got it partially right. They were a mixed bunch — from long timers such as George “Morrison of Peking”; glamorous journalist-sojourners such as Peter Fleming and Emily Hahn; and reporter-tourists such as Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn, along with numerous less celebrated, but no less interesting, members of the old China press corps. A fair few were drunks, philanderers, and frauds; more than one was a spy — they changed sides, they lost their impartiality, they displayed bias and a few were downright scoundrels and liars. But most did their job ably and professionally, some passionately and a select few with rare flair and touches of genius.Less

Through the Looking Glass : China's Foreign Journalists from Opium Wars to Mao

Paul French

Published in print: 2009-05-01

The history of foreign journalists in China starts with the newspapers printed in the European Factories of Canton in the 1820s and ends with the Communist revolution in 1949. It also starts with a duel between two editors over China's future and ends with a fistfight in Shanghai over the revolution. The men and women of the foreign press experienced China's history and development; its convulsions and upheavals; its revolutions and wars. They had front row seats at every major twist and turn in China's fortunes. The old China press corps were the witnesses and the primary interpreters to millions globally of the history of modern China and they were themselves a cast of fascinating characters. Like journalists everywhere they took sides, they brought their own assumptions and prejudices to China along with their hopes, dreams and fears. They weren't infallible; they got the story completely wrong as often as they got it partially right. They were a mixed bunch — from long timers such as George “Morrison of Peking”; glamorous journalist-sojourners such as Peter Fleming and Emily Hahn; and reporter-tourists such as Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn, along with numerous less celebrated, but no less interesting, members of the old China press corps. A fair few were drunks, philanderers, and frauds; more than one was a spy — they changed sides, they lost their impartiality, they displayed bias and a few were downright scoundrels and liars. But most did their job ably and professionally, some passionately and a select few with rare flair and touches of genius.

While Hong Kong's spectacular economic growth and political development have been well documented, the social and cultural lives of the ordinary people swept up in the changes have not found a ...
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While Hong Kong's spectacular economic growth and political development have been well documented, the social and cultural lives of the ordinary people swept up in the changes have not found a significant voice. Through the personal experiences of the author of this book and those around him, this book gives a voice to people whose lives have been profoundly affected by the dramatic changes, as Hong Kong transitioned from an entrepôt to an international financial centre and from a colony to become a part of China. The book contributes to the ongoing search for Hong Kong identity in the Special Administrative Region.Less

The Dragon and the Crown : Hong Kong Memoirs

Stanley S.K. KwanNicole Kwan

Published in print: 2008-11-01

While Hong Kong's spectacular economic growth and political development have been well documented, the social and cultural lives of the ordinary people swept up in the changes have not found a significant voice. Through the personal experiences of the author of this book and those around him, this book gives a voice to people whose lives have been profoundly affected by the dramatic changes, as Hong Kong transitioned from an entrepôt to an international financial centre and from a colony to become a part of China. The book contributes to the ongoing search for Hong Kong identity in the Special Administrative Region.

The Chinese Educational Mission was one of the earliest efforts at educational modernization in China. As part of the Self-Strengthening Movement, the Qing government sent 120 students to New England ...
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The Chinese Educational Mission was one of the earliest efforts at educational modernization in China. As part of the Self-Strengthening Movement, the Qing government sent 120 students to New England to live and study for a decade, before they were abruptly summoned home to China in 1881. This book, based upon research in local archives and newspapers, focuses on the experiences of the students during their nine-year stay in the United States, providing an account of one of the major projects of the Self-Strengthening Movement. To date, there are at most two credible studies in English and Chinese on the Chinese Educational Mission; both are deficient in source citation and tend to dwell on the students' experiences after their return to China rather than during their stay in America. This volume compares and contrasts the experiences of the Chinese students with those of other Chinese in the United States during a period of rising anti-Chinese sentiment, which culminated in the enactment of Chinese Exclusion in 1882. It also compares and contrasts students from China with those from Japan, which sent large numbers of students to New England at roughly the same period of time. This book offers a slightly different perspective from most other works on the nature of the anti-Chinese movement, which may have been more class-based rather than race-based.Less

Stepping Forth into the World : The Chinese Educational Mission to the United States, 1872-81

Edward J. M. Rhoads

Published in print: 2011-02-01

The Chinese Educational Mission was one of the earliest efforts at educational modernization in China. As part of the Self-Strengthening Movement, the Qing government sent 120 students to New England to live and study for a decade, before they were abruptly summoned home to China in 1881. This book, based upon research in local archives and newspapers, focuses on the experiences of the students during their nine-year stay in the United States, providing an account of one of the major projects of the Self-Strengthening Movement. To date, there are at most two credible studies in English and Chinese on the Chinese Educational Mission; both are deficient in source citation and tend to dwell on the students' experiences after their return to China rather than during their stay in America. This volume compares and contrasts the experiences of the Chinese students with those of other Chinese in the United States during a period of rising anti-Chinese sentiment, which culminated in the enactment of Chinese Exclusion in 1882. It also compares and contrasts students from China with those from Japan, which sent large numbers of students to New England at roughly the same period of time. This book offers a slightly different perspective from most other works on the nature of the anti-Chinese movement, which may have been more class-based rather than race-based.